Faculty Bibliography

Officials of the institute have said that they did not know about Dr. [N. Eric Naftchi]'s work. Jeffrey Teramani, a spokesman for the American Association of the Advancement of Science, which publishes Science, said that the editors of that journal and the two experts who reviewed Dr. Naftchi's paper had not asked to review the videotapes because videotapes were considered ''raw data.'' Improvement in Humans ''That's absolutely not true,'' Dr. [Joseph Ransohoff] said in an interview yesterday. The neurosurgeon said that his team had prescribed another drug called naloxone, which is being tested with the approval of the Food and Drug Administration. ''We have had no contact with Dr. Naftchi's research whatsoever,'' Dr. Ransohoff said. Dr. Harvey S. Sadow, president of the drug company, said yesterday that he was trying to determine ''the circumstances under which Dr. Naftchi's request, if any, may have been rejected.'' Dr. Sadow said that he was ''impressed with the findings of Dr. Naftchi'' and that the company ''would likely be supportive provided the basis'' for his scientific experiments ''was sound.''

In an interview, Dr. [N. Eric Naftchi] said that none of the humans had been made to walk but that all had improved. ''They get their balance back,'' he said. ''They get feeling of coldness and heat. These are things that the cats don't tell us.'' Dr. [Bruce B. Grynbaum] of New York University said that two patients had been treated with clonidine for their spasticity ''about two to three years ago'' and that ''they got some relief of the spasticity'' with the drug. The doctors stopped the drug treatment because of sideeffects, Dr. Grynbaum said. He declined to elaborate. The benefits of the drug then stopped, he said. When asked to explain the significance of his research, Dr. Naftchi said, ''I would think this would be, I hope, the end of seeing paralyzed people on wheels.'' He also said, ''I think it is the find of the century.''

Of the three main types of influenza, A, B and C, only A and B are associated with epidemics, and they generally occur in winter months. Influenza A has caused most major influenza epidemics. Neither amantadine nor rimantadine combats influenza B. Of the 450 volunteers, 72 dropped out in the six weeks of the study, primarily because of side effects of the drugs. Twenty-two percent of the people in the amantadine group, about twice as many as the two other groups, dropped out for all reasons. Thirteen percent of amantadine group withdrew because of side effects involving the central nervous system, such as insomnia, ''jitteriness'' and difficulty in concentrating. Only 6 percent of the rimantadine group and 4 percent of the placebo group withdrew, citing side effects. Far Fewer Became Ill The researchers found that influenza-like illness occurred in 41 percent of the volunteers who took a placebo but in only 14 percent of those who took rimantadine and 9 percent of those who took amantadine. Documentation of influenza by laboratory tests was found in 21 percent of those who took a placebo, 3 percent of those who took rimantadine and 2 percent of those who took amantadine

Dr. [Daniel J. Leithauser] found that early ambulation had been practiced in Europe, Africa and South America, although there it was not widely adopted until the late 1920's. Dr. Leithauser concluded from his analysis of 29 foreign reports and his own cases that the practice of early ambulation saved lives by preventing several types of complications such as pneumonia and other lung problems. By the 1950's, early ambulation had become standard in the care of surgical patients in this country. Yet early ambulation at first ''was considered a crackpot idea,'' Dr. Leithauser said. He likened the resistance he met to that encountered 50 years earlier by doctors who tried to persuade their colleagues to wash their hands and apply other sterile techniques before examining patients. Early ambulation is often painful, sometimes very painful. Many doctors were reluctant to apply it because they were timid or thought it cruel, and some patients complained bitterly. Dr. Leithauser remained firm: ''To have the patient dangle the feet over the edge of the bed or to sit in a chair is not early ambulation,'' he insisted

Oraflex is Lilly's brand name for benoxaprofen, which belongs to a large class called nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. More than a dozen such drugs are marketed in the United States, and among them they have been linked to more than 1,000 deaths since 1969, according to the F.D.A. But in its press kits, Lilly claimed that Oraflex had ''different activity from that of other drugs in its class'' and that ''preliminary evidence also suggests that the disease process may be retarded in human patients'' who take one Oraflex pill each day. The letter accused Lilly of promoting ''false and misleading'' concepts about the benefits and safety of Oraflex. Lilly was warned ''several times'' during many discussions that its claims for ''notable differences between this drug and other class members are theoretical and highly speculative,'' the letter said. Those differences were of unknown significance in the treatment of arthritis, the drug agency said. Further, the letter reprimanded Lilly for inaccurately describing as ''mild, transient and avoidable'' two side effects resulting from exposure to sunlight in ''some arthritic patients taking Oraflex.'' One side effect was a rash. The other was onycholysis, a condition in which the nails are loosened from the nailbeds

So when 29 runners were treated for severe heat injury after the 10-kilometer (6.2 miles) Peachtree Road Race in Atlanta on July 4, 1979, a team of researchers from Emory University and the Centers for Disease Control, headed by Dr. Albert C. England 3d, had a rare opportunity to study the phenomenon and to offer what they believe are some valid recommendations for running in heat and humidity. (It was 75 degrees, 83 percent humidity when the race began, 82 degrees and 69 percent at the finish.) Also, they found that runners who were injured by the heat seemed to have had few warning signs. After the injured runners regained normal consciousness and before they were discharged from the emergency room, they were asked if they recalled experiencing any of the following eight symptoms before collapsing: goose flesh on the chest and upper arms; chills; headache or throbbing in the head; dizziness or weakness; nausea or vomiting; dry skin; euphoria; or feelings of ''impending doom.'' The researchers said that their study also failed to support the usefulness of several commonly advocated strategies for preventing heat injury. Drinking fluids containing glucose and electrolytes - chemicals normally present in the body but apt to be lost through exertion - seemed to make no difference. Neither did ''topping up'' with about a pint of water before the race, or frequent sips during the exertion. However, the researchers said that drinking would probably be useful in longer races, such as marathons, where runners compete for much longer periods

Yet, during the epidemic, Mayor John Purroy Mitchell of New York, concerned about the economic impact on the city's hotel and restaurant business, issued statements trying ''to allay this groundless fear'' of people who declined to visit New York. According to ''A History of Poliomyelitis'' by Dr. John R. Paul (Yale University Press, 1971), it was not until the 1870's that scientists in Europe pinpointed the exact location of the damage caused by the polio virus: the anterior horn cells of the spinal cord. The polio virus was then unknown. But [Wickman] reasoned that whatever caused polio could spread from the victim of a mild case as easily as from a severe one. He understood what others did not - that an individual who was infected by polio but who escaped paralysis or who developed only minor symptoms was, from the standpoint of contagion, just as dangerous to the community as was the paralyzed individual

A single dose of a new drug appears to be effective in treating ''river blindness,'' a parasitic disease that is a major cause of blindness, scientists from the United States, Senegal and France have reported on the basis of a small study in West Africa. The new drug is called ivermectin. In the July 24 issue of The Lancet, a British journal, the researchers said that ''ivermectin may prove to be a major advance in the treatment and/or eradication of one of the major parasitic diseases of our time.'' The research group, headed by Dr. Mohammed A. Aziz of Merck, found that small doses of ivermectin did not reduce the number of parasites in the skin of the volunteers. But they found that the number of parasites was ''strikingly reduced in all 16 subjects within 48 hours'' who received larger doses of ivermectin, and was eliminated completely in six of the eight volunteers who took the largest doses.

Fluosol-DA is a combination of inert substances called perfluorochemicals that are capable of carrying large amounts of oxygen. One pioneer in American investigations of the substances, Dr. Robert P. Geyer of the Harvard School of Public Health, said in an editorial in the same issue of the journal that Dr. [Kevin K. Tremper]'s study was ''the first well-monitored multi-patient study involving a perfluorochemical in the United States.'' Afflicted With Severe Anemia Of the seven patients reported on, two did not complete the treatment because they developed symptoms following test doses of Fluosol-DA. ''All five patients receiving clinical doses of Fluosol tolerated surgery well,'' the researchers said, ''although the most severely anemic patient died on the fifth postoperative day'' from a failure of several body organs that was judged to be ''unrelated to Fluosol.''

One physician trying to shake the complacency about infections is Dr. Richard M. Krause, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Md. The National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, a private organization in Washington, has just published a collection of Dr. Krause's popular lectures as ''The Restless Tide: The Persistent Challenge of the Microbial World.'' These lucid essays are the type needed to promote a more intelligent public health policy. ''No one,'' Dr. Krause said, ''anticipated the microbe guerrilla actions that were to break out from enclaves in the rear, as the medical research enterprise regrouped for a frontal assault on chronic and degenerative diseases and deployed the best and the brightest for the attack.'' He correctly argues that Americans need to devote more resources to the battle against infectious diseases. ''Sometime between 1950 and 1960 the medical profession and the public began to dismiss infections as serious threats to health,'' Dr. Krause says. ''By and large, the profession, medical foundations and later even the Federal Government closed the book on infectious diseases and set new health research priorities focusing on the persisting problems of heart disease, cancer, stroke and a whole series of chronic and degenerative diseases.''